


Making Saviours out of Ordinary People

by ASheepsLife



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: After way too much unnecessary heart-ache, And the boys are idiots who don't talk about their feelings, Angst with a Happy Ending, Because Jensen overthinks everything, Dirty Talk, First Time, Frottage, Getting Together, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex, Pining, Post-Movie: The Losers (2010), now with second chapter, which is mostly porn with some feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-15 08:44:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17525489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASheepsLife/pseuds/ASheepsLife
Summary: There was definitely a pattern.During the day, Cougar was distant, withdrawn and cool. While he hadn’t yet outright fled any room Jensen happened to be in, he was nowhere near as tactile as he usually was around Jensen, and a day could go by without them exchanging two words. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Cougar was talking even less than usual and Jensen was picking up the slack, filling the increasingly strained silences with ever more inane blathering. Aisha was starting to look like she might take a leaf out of Roque’s book, the way she kept fondling her knives.Yet every night, without fail, would find Cougar on Jensen’s floor, his hold on Jensen’s wrist unrelenting.~~~When Jensen gets hurt on a mission, Cougar starts acting oddly. Now if only Jensen could figure out why...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You know that thing where a single line of dialogue springs into your head and won't let you rest until you do something with it, and then you look up and it's 15k words later? Yeah.
> 
> Pretentious title courtesy of the Great Lake Swimmers' "River's Edge".
> 
> Be gentle with me, it's my first time in the fandom.

The first thing Jensen became aware of was a persistent beeping somewhere way too close to his sensitive eardrums. Surely there was no need to make _that_ much of a racket; it had been so peacefully . . . nothing-y before. And dark. Well, technically it was still dark, pedantically speaking. Jensen tried to convince his eyelids to do their thing, but they might have weighed a ton apiece for all the good it did him. Come to think of it, everything felt rather heavy, sluggish, like something was messing with his brain-to-body connection. That usually meant drugs, and in combination with the luxuriantly scratchy sheets he could feel on way too much of his skin could really only point toward one conclusion.

 _Ugh_.

‘In hospital’ had to be his least favorite way to wake up. Well, perhaps discounting strapped naked across the back of a llama with a string of multi-colored fairy lights, but that was _one time_ , Clay. He was starting to lose count of the number of times he’d ended up in one hospital or another. Which maybe wasn’t an indicator for the healthiest of lifestyles but could also have something to do with that _infernal noise_ that made thinking impossible and that someone had clearly devised to drive Jensen personally absolutely batshit. Was enough to wake a guy from a coma, honestly.

“What does a body have to do to get a minute of rest around here?” he grouched. Or thought he did — it was kind of hard to tell, his head being stuffed with fluffy pink cotton candy the way it was.

“Not getting fatally shot and failing to tell his team he’s bleeding to death would be a good start,” came a dry voice from his right.

Oh hey, it worked!

“What, nearly giving Pooch a heart attack?”

Apparently, his brain-to-mouth filter wasn’t up to scratch yet either. Well, even less up to scratch than usual. Better get that under control. Wouldn’t do to let Clay know that out of all of them, he would be the first to have a heart attack since he was responsible for keeping them all (more or less) in one piece, arguably drank the most, and was also the oldest.

“Keeping you idiots alive is the reason I drink,” Clay said, in that tone of fond exasperation that meant he was having to dial up the exasperation in order to hide the fondness. Jensen should know, he heard that tone a lot. Finally succeeding in opening his eyes, he aimed a probably somewhat uncontrolled grin (he couldn’t really feel his face) at Clay where he was leaning with his back against a window.

“Aww, you do care.”

Arms folded and legs crossed at the ankles, Clay leveled a deeply unimpressed look at Jensen. “You’d be lucky to reach my age, rate you’re going.”

His attention was then caught by something to Jensen’s other side, and Jensen turned his head to find he had another visitor. Cougar was sitting on the room’s only chair, elbows braced on his knees with the fingers of his right hand nearly brushing Jensen’s mattress. Jensen didn’t have to see the entirety of his face to know he was currently glaring daggers at their CO from underneath his hat. Cougar was awesome like that.

At that, Cougar shifted his gaze to Jensen, and while his posture was still humming with tension, his eyes were laced with amusement.

Oh. Was he still talking out loud?

No, but he didn’t have to, Cougar’s eyebrow informed him.

“All right,” Clay said, pushing off the window, “since you two don’t seem inclined to include anyone else in the conversation, I’m gonna head back and let the others know we won’t need to break in a new tech after all.” He rested his hand on Jensen’s ankle in passing, before making his way to the door. “Try not to get yourself killed,” he added as a parting shot.

“Wasn’t trying the first time,” Jensen called after him, admittedly rather weakly — he could already feel himself edging back towards the oblivion of unconsciousness. Predictably, there was no response. Turning back to Cougar, Jensen was met with a dark glare.

“What? I wasn’t.” The look that got him clearly spelled out ‘could’ve fooled me’ and, really, that was just way more sarcasm than the situation called for. “Oh, don’t be such a drama queen.”

Cougar clenched his jaw and his glare became, if possible, even more intense. Oh, he was _pissed_. Fortunately, Jensen was about to check out. He flung out his arm just as his eyelids lost their battle against gravity again, and luckily found his mark, patting one of Cougar’s hands placatingly, if somewhat clumsily. “Cougar, my man, ‘f you wanna ream me out, ‘m afraid it’s gonna have to wait. ‘m about to pass out.”

A moment later he did just that, the impression of fingers gently closing around his own the last thing he was aware of.

~~~

_He remembered, or maybe he dreamt, confused and disorienting impressions. A burning pain, radiating through his veins; warm hands, steady and sure; a miserable cold pervading limbs set ablaze; warmth enveloping him, holding him, keeping him safe. Twin bands, steadfast as always, preventing him from drifting away, disintegrating, shaking apart, coming undone. And a voice, achingly familiar yet frustratingly unintelligible. He knew with absolute certainty that it was crucial he make out the words, but he might as well have tried catching smoke in his bare hands. Why couldn’t he understand . . ._

~~~

Jensen woke to a room bathed in darkness, feeling the phantom imprint of a hand on his chest, as if he should be able to look down and find the shape of it branded on the skin over his heart. Well, if he weren’t wearing that blasted hospital gown. Ugh, had he mentioned how much he hated hospitals? Weren’t they supposed to be all about _relieving_ discomfort? Speaking of, it was a minor miracle that he’d been able to conk out at all with that heart monitor from hell still merrily trying to trepan his skull. What he did find when he tilted his head was Cougar’s hand wrapped around his where it lay on the mattress. Huh. So he hadn’t imagined that. A furtive glance at Cougar’s face revealed him to be sitting with his head tipped forward, hat pulled low over closed eyes. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before. Or, well, as the last time Jensen had been awake. Maybe he’d clocked out after Jensen, before he’d gotten the chance to extract himself from Jensen’s clutches. Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted to disturb Jensen.

Yeah, right. Sneaky McStealth himself unable to get his hand back from the guy knocked out by drugs and severe blood loss without waking abovementioned Sleeping Beauty aspirant.

If only his noisy brain would allow Jensen to just savor this unexpected occurrence instead of going into overdrive. Yeah, ideally without being hooked up to a machine that displayed for all the world to see just what it was doing to him, and specifically his heart, but beggars, choosers, etc. See, for all that Jensen and Cougar were fairly physical with each other, generous with their touches and frequently using them for communication, holding hands wasn’t usually part of their routine. Not even when one or the other of them inevitably ended up in hospital.

Admittedly, this particular mission had gone tits-up in a rather grueling fashion. They’d gotten wind of a data acquisition Max had arranged with some shady characters in high places, the manual reception and relay point of which was, for reasons Jensen was convinced had solely to do with giving him personally a hard time, so far up in the north of Canada he could’ve sent a postcard from the arctic circle. Given its isolated location the Losers had suspected the site didn’t get a lot of walk-in traffic and figured a small, unobtrusive operation to be their best bet. The fewer tracks the better. To increase Cougar and Jensen’s chances of remaining undetected, the other three had raised a bit of hell at one of Max’ not-so-secret warehouses in order to draw his attention. Of course, the remoteness also made a quick exit strategy a bit of a challenge.

Backed up against a steep crag, the facility (if one wanted to call it that — which one could, if one was feeling generous) enjoyed fairly good natural protection against trespassers, leaving Jensen with an improbable outcrop of rock more or less vertically above his target from which to do his meddling. For the purposes of jamming the transfer Jensen had needed on-site access, which Cougar had been tasked to grant him by drawing off any attendant henchmen that might have been alerted to the fact that someone was messing with their incoming signal. In, out, no drama. All very under the radar.

Jensen’s position on the overhang had meant he was invisible and inaccessible from below. It had also meant he was exposed to and trapped by anyone coming from behind, a sitting duck for the two-man patrol they hadn’t factored in because there had been little time for scouting and because the squat structure in question hadn’t looked like it could support two people, let alone four. And who lingered out of doors at the ass end of nowhere for extended periods of time in sub-sub- _sub_ -zero temperatures, anyway, how much was Max _paying_ these assholes?

Long story short, before he'd known what was happening Jensen had felt the shock-sharp pain of a bullet in his inner thigh and it was only thanks to the thugs’ atrocious aim that he’d managed to spin around and dispatch them with his own significantly superior marksmanship.

Everyone involved then of course being alerted to the fact that something was going majorly south, Jensen had been on the clock. He’d informed Cougar that they were now very much on the radar and it was open season on evil henchmen. Then, ignoring both Cougar’s urgent voice in his ear and the growing stain of red around him, he had grit his teeth against his graying vision and finished the damn job. Dastardly plans successfully thwarted, he’d barely managed to slump against the rock face behind him, sending Cougar a silent apology, before it was lights out.

Cougar’s voice pulled him out of his memory.

“You were sleeping a minute ago. How come your brain is already going a hundred miles a minute?”

Jensen ~~guiltily~~ tore his eyes from where they had returned to their hands, fixing them on Cougar’s face. His eyes were still closed.

“Hey man,” Jensen offered, because he couldn’t just keep staring, “thought maybe you were asleep.”

“Was. Now I’m not.”

“Oh. Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.” He wasn’t sure how much credence to give to Cougar’s claim. He’d have thought nothing short of critical blood loss would allow someone to sleep next to that fucking machine. He hoped Cougar would attribute the change in Jensen’s heart-rate it’d audibly announced to him waking up and not to . . . other things. “You look like you could use some sleep.” It was true; in the dim light coming in through the window Cougar looked haggard, face drawn and strangely fragile.

At that, Cougar did open his eyes, slanting Jensen a look that clearly conveyed he thought Jensen had no leg to stand on.

“Hey, I got plenty of sleep. I just slept for—” Good question, actually. “How long was I out?”

Without taking his eyes off Jensen, Cougar replied: “Eight hours.”

Trying not to react too obviously to the possibility that Cougar had not moved from his side during that entire time, Jensen shot the clock on his bedside table a glance. 2:14am. Anyone would feel like crap waking up at that time of the night, regardless of whether or not they’d recently been shot.

Resolutely not thinking about how Cougar _still_ had not let go of his hand, Jensen asked: “And before that?”

That brought The Glare™ back. Which stood in strange juxtaposition to how gentle his hold on Jensen’s hand— nope, not thinking about it.

“Three days,” Cougar replied once he’d unstuck his jaw.

Well. That wasn’t so bad, considering —

Oh.

Considering he’d been pretty sure he’d been about to buy it. Bleed to death alone at the cold end of Canada. Judging by how royally ticked off Cougar was, he’d probably figured that was the conclusion Jensen had come to. Cougar always got strangely testy whenever he felt Jensen didn’t care enough about his own well-being.

Trying his best not to squirm under Cougar’s gaze, he decided it was time for some damage control.

“In my defense, I really wasn’t trying to get shot.”

That was apparently the wrong thing to say. Cougar snarled, eyes sparking.

“You didn’t tell me! The mission is not that important. You are priority!”

Right, ok, now that was — Jensen was just going to pretend his insides hadn’t gone all warm and fuzzy. They were a team, of course they cared about each other. Nevertheless, the point still stood: “You know we couldn’t let old kingpin get his hands on that data. We had to stop them.”

Cougar was practically vibrating with tension, and since Jensen wasn’t actually aiming to rile him up (this time) he tried to insert a conciliatory note into his voice.

“Anyway, once the damage was done there was no sense in you abandoning your post before the job was done. What difference would it have made?”

Despite his reputation, he wasn’t trying to be ornery. Once he’d realized he was most likely not going to make it, the logical thing to do given the circumstances had been to finish the mission. Letting Max’ men complete the data transfer, only for Jensen to die anyway because even if he somehow managed to get back to their ~~shack~~ base, it wasn’t equipped to treat someone who’d gone and lost a not-uncritical amount of his blood, would’ve been undeniably pointless. Not to mention disastrous. Surely Cougar had to agree.

“Not the point!”

Or not.

“You gave up!” Cougar continued, tightening his grip on Jensen’s hand, as if that, in combination with his heated gaze, would help hammer the point home. “You don’t give up.”

“I — now that’s—” Damn it, now he had Jensen on the defensive. And he knew it, the bastard, daring Jensen to disagree with a challenging eyebrow. “I didn’t _give up_ , I was . . . being realistic about the odds.”

Cougar let out another growl. Usually he was the last to lose his cool when Jensen was being insufferable, but right then he looked like he wanted to shake Jensen until he took the matter more seriously.

"You can’t— I thought— You almost—” He broke off with a sharp exhale.

For all that Cougar was being disconcertingly incoherent, there was no way Jensen for to miss that last part.

_You almost died._

Momentarily struck dumb, Jensen watched as Cougar bowed his head over their clasped hands, visibly trying to rein in his agitation. Seeing Cougar’s vehement reaction, it sunk in fully for the first time: This had been his closest call yet. He really almost hadn’t made it.

Dropping his gaze from the top of Cougar’s hat, Jensen instead fixed his eyes on the thread he was picking out of the hospital sheet with his unoccupied right hand. He prayed for his voice to be steady.

“I know.” Out of his peripherals, Jensen saw Cougar lift his head again, but found himself unable to meet his eyes. “But I didn’t.”

Cougar stared at Jensen for another moment, then he let out a heavy breath and sat back in his chair from where he’d leant forward the better to yell at Jensen (relaxing his hold on Jensen’s hand but still _not letting go_ ). He tipped his head back and pulled down his hat, apparently deeming the discussion tabled until Jensen had sufficiently recuperated. It was probably Cougar’s protectiveness at war with itself; to inflict bodily harm to get the point across or to threaten bodily harm if Jensen so much as broke a fingernail, that was the question.

Jensen, who couldn’t Zen himself into a calmer state of mind, was left to contemplate his own mortality. Before he could come up with a way to distract himself from that unpleasant exercise, Cougar did the job for him, voice dry as dirt.

“Also, never tell me the odds.”

Jensen gaped at him.

“Did you just quote Star Wars at me? Am I still unconscious?”

That apparently didn’t do anything to convince Cougar that Jensen was taking matters seriously. Turning his head, he brought his full unamused intensity back to bear on Jensen. “Do not think you are off the hook.”

Well, that was just too easy. Jensen felt he really couldn’t be blamed for taking the obvious opening, injecting the required amount of pathos into his voice.

“I know.”

Cougar rolled his eyes, which hopefully meant he wasn’t picking up on the minor freak-out Jensen was having over remembering the context of that iconic line a fraction of a second too late. Cougar wouldn’t think he’d meant anything by it. That would be ridiculous. Not that he _had_ meant anything by it. It wasn't like he was in lo— of course he wasn’t. That line was just inherently quotable, was all. He was pretty sure you could ask anyone, even the squarest non-geeks of this world, and they would admit to compulsively quoting it. So there was no reason for anyone to read . . . anything into it.

Except now Cougar had apparently shifted his focus to their hands (there went Jensen’s theory that maybe he’d somehow just forgotten about that), looking at them absently, positively contemplatively, and if he was contemplating anything like what Jensen was, it needed to be nipped in the bud, _yesterday_. So, naturally, he blurted out the first thing that came to his mind.

“Hey, I’ve been wondering, since I was, you know, not conscious for most of it: Refresh my memory, how _did_ I get from that fateful snowy outcrop to — where are we, anyway?”

Aaand Cougar was back to tightly-wound violin string. Shit. While Jensen was still scrambling wildly for another change in topic (anyone with prolonged Jensen-exposure eventually learnt to roll with his particular brand of conversational whiplash) Cougar spoke up quietly, still focused on their hands.

“I did everything I could. To keep you alive.”

Fuck. Well, that got heavy fast. Jensen had figured that his being there was probably in no small part thanks to Cougar, what with the others being stupidly far away at the time, but the fact remained that Jensen had left him with a teammate draining blood from his thigh in sub-zero temperatures with little in the way of supplies, medical or otherwise. Jensen cleared his throat awkwardly, also finding himself looking at their hands.

“Yeah, uh, thanks. By the way. For, you know. That.”

This was ridiculous. The number of times the team had saved each other’s asses couldn’t be counted on their collective fingers. Why was he fumbling now?

Cougar continued, and Jensen wondered if he’d even heard him.

“You would not stop shivering.” His grip grew tighter again, this time seemingly without conscious decision on his part. “All that blood. You would not warm up.”

With a morbid sort of fascination, Jensen hung off his every word, and not just because Cougar was being unusually verbose. It felt almost like Cougar was weaving a spell that Jensen was reluctant if not incapable of breaking.

“I tried. Everything I could. I did not think you would make it.”

Ok, this was getting a little scary. Cougar seemed to have lost awareness of his surroundings, staring unseeingly ahead, talking more to himself than to Jensen, and was possibly revealing more than he’d be comfortable with — certainly more than Jensen knew what to do with. Moreover, the guilt and self-recrimination he could hear in Cougar’s voice made his stomach twist uncomfortably. Giving Cougar’s hand a squeeze of his own, Jensen tried to bring him out of it.

“Cougs, hey.”

He waited to see if it would work, and — success! — Cougar drew his gaze to Jensen’s, even though it still had a disturbingly thousand-yard quality to it.

“I did. OK? I did make it.”

He did a little “ta-da!” gesture at himself with his right hand, trying to lighten the mood. “You must’ve done something right.”

Cougar did seem to focus then, overshooting the mark for two people making conversational eye contact and landing somewhere at trying to vivisect Jensen’s individual braincells without a microscope. Feeling a bit like the proverbial deer in headlights — with one leg inexorably trapped in the hunter’s grip — or maybe one of those wicked-looking bear traps — it was a disconcerting feeling, ok, confusing his metaphors was therefore only appropriate — Jensen held his gaze and maybe also his breath. Cougar could be intense like that.

After an endless moment, just when Jensen thought he might try stopping other vital bodily functions like his heartbeat next, Cougar clenched his jaw and briefly dropped his eyes back to their hands, before abruptly letting go and getting to his feet, disappearing through the door without a backward glance.

Jensen puffed his cheeks and blew out his breath noisily through his lips.

“Good talk.”

~~~

Things remained tense for the remainder of Jensen’s hospital stay. Cougar was there more than he wasn’t, but he was even less talkative than usual, even though Jensen could tell there was a lot he wasn’t saying. Jensen could also tell there was a lot of sleep he wasn’t getting; he looked weary, and his skin seemed to have acquired a permanent pallor. And he wasn’t the one laid up in a hospital bed. When Jensen helpfully suggested that maybe Cougar should rest up as well, the bed was big enough after all, he got death glared into not trying that again. (Yeah, he was blaming the painkillers for that one, too.)

But honestly, what was he supposed to do? He had always been able to get a read on Cougar, and now, all of a sudden, he was an enigma; obviously troubled, perfectly opaque. It was making Jensen jumpy as shit. Which made him increasingly hyperverbal, which in turn was winding Cougar up ever tighter. It was decidedly strained and exceedingly exhausting, and all told Jensen was glad to finally be able to relocate to their safe house because at least there he didn’t feel quite so inescapably fettered to his bed. He was still frustratingly weak and swoony and slept for ridiculous amounts of time but at least he didn’t have disapproving doctors hounding his every step whenever he couldn’t lie still any longer and took his IV stand for an ill-advised stroll.

He also didn’t have a high-strung Cougar haunting his bedside. The minute Jensen was safely ensconced in Generic Midwestern Wannabe-Homestead #316 in Nowheresville, Saskatchewan (complete with wraparound porch), Cougar made himself scarce, going from close shadow to baleful specter.

The rest of the Losers threw a bit of a “welcome home/yay, you didn’t die” party, which mostly consisted of too much greasy take-out spread out across the living room furniture, them pretending not to monitor Jensen’s beer intake (they really needn’t have worried; he felt woozy enough as it was without the help of alcohol), and Pooch vocally threatening that if Jensen ever made him medevac his unconscious, hypothermic ass in a third-rate chopper in subarctic conditions again he was going to shave Jensen’s peach-fuzz of a beard straight off his stupid face. (Thanks to the short notice they’d had in preparing the mission they hadn’t had any long-distance emergency extraction capacity on stand-by; it’d been all Clay, Pooch and Aisha could do to scramble that beat-up bird through semi-legal means, and it had still taken them hours Jensen hadn’t had after Cougar placed the distress call.)

“Love you too, Pooch,” Jensen toasted him with his container of lo mein.

All in all, he was glad to be alive and with his fucked-up family.

He didn’t see Cougar for the rest of the day.

~~~

That night, Jensen woke to a hand on his arm.

He’d been having another one of those dreams that were beleaguering him since his sojourn in the arctic wilderness. Dreams that weren’t really nightmares, but all the more haunting for how disturbingly real and inescapable they felt. Dreams in which an inexorable cold leeched the life from him, merciless, every beat of his heart bringing him closer to the inevitable end.

Blinking open his eyes to the nocturnal gloom revealed the hand curled around his wrist to be Cougar’s. He was sitting against the wall next to the bed, his free arm resting over drawn up knees, once again wearing that far-away look on his face.

They’d bunked together often enough over the years to have been woken by the other’s nightmares more than once. Hell, they’d all shared the occasional late-night beer with one another when their personal demons drove them out of bed. Cougar stealing into his room in the middle of the night, however, was new.

Propping himself up a little ways on his elbow, Jensen cleared his throat.

“Hey man,” he said, going for casual and blaming the lateness of the hour if his voice came out a little too rough. “You all right?”

Yeah, because someone sitting on the floor of their sleeping team mate’s room in the dark was a sure sign they were having the time of their life.

“Nightmare?” he tried again when that, predictably, didn’t elicit a response.

Another moment passed, then the fingers wrapped around his wrist gave a gentle squeeze. Maybe Jensen was still asleep after all. That explanation was less likely to give him a headache than holding hands becoming a _thing_ for the two of them.

“Go back to sleep,” Cougar said quietly. Jensen stared at the side of Cougar’s face some more, trying to decide if the situation called for a freak-out. But despite his almost preternatural stillness, Cougar displayed a reassuring degree of situational awareness. Plus, some might say paradoxically, Jensen’s presence was oftentimes enough to ground Cougar when he got out of his head.

“All right,” he decided, lowering himself back down and demonstratively closing his eyes. “Don’t hesitate to wake me, though. I can always sleep on the job.”

For all that he had his own nightmares to count on for rude awakenings, Jensen usually had little trouble falling asleep. In the quietness of the room, however, he couldn’t deny he was still a little twigged out, for all that he did his best to project an air of supreme unconcern. He shifted around, trying to alleviate his restlessness under the guise of getting comfortable. If he was careful not to dislodge the hand still wound securely around his wrist it was nobody’s business but his.

And if he eventually fell asleep focusing on that warm point of contact, well, there was no one to tell, either.

~~~

There was definitely a pattern.

During the day, Cougar was distant, withdrawn and cool. While he hadn’t yet outright fled any room Jensen happened to be in, he was nowhere near as tactile as he usually was around Jensen, and a day could go by without them exchanging two words. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Cougar was talking even less than usual and Jensen was picking up the slack, filling the increasingly strained silences with ever more inane blathering. Aisha was starting to look like she might take a leaf out of Roque’s book, the way she kept fondling her knives.

Yet every night, without fail, would find Cougar on Jensen’s floor, his hold on Jensen’s wrist unrelenting. One night, a few nights in, Jensen rolled over onto his side, opening up a small amount of space behind himself (incidental vacation; no implications or ulterior motives), and grumbled: “At least get off the floor. You’re giving _me_ a back ache.”

When he woke in the morning, Cougar was gone.

The dreams also persisted. Some nights he felt like he might never truly be warm again were it not for the hot band around his forearm.

~~~

Of course, because Jensen couldn’t let sleeping cats lie, and because he could avoid actually dealing with his emotional issues like any self-respecting dysfunctional adult, he spent as much time around Cougar as he could. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to enforce normality upon their decidedly atypical interactions (which felt like attempting to force the equal poles of two magnets to meet and was going to give him hives sooner rather than later), or angling for annoying Cougar to such an extent that the latter would finally lose his enervating composure and snap; he just knew he was fraying at the edges. Throw in the fact that he was still far from recuperated and the result was a perpetually exhausted and existentially brittle Jensen.

Didn’t stop him from dropping onto the couch next to Cougar, whose eyes were fixed on the TV with way more intensity than old Magnum, P.I. reruns merited, with an overly casual inquiry of “Whatcha watchin’?”. Also didn’t stop him from falling asleep mere minutes into the fraught silence that followed.

When Jensen woke from his impromptu anemia-induced nap, it was to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (original series, were they going back in time, or what?) on television and Cougar sleeping on his shoulder.

Somewhere, someone was laughing at Jensen. Probably the universe, maybe the Fates, possibly only Pooch in the next room. The unmistakable evidence that Cougar wasn’t getting enough sleep was somewhat lost in the face of Jensen desperately trying not to notice that sleeping Cougar apparently had no compunctions to cross the distance between them, snuggling right up to Jensen’s side like he didn’t spend his days giving Jensen the cold shoulder. He had his head on Jensen’s shoulder, his hair brushing Jensen’s neck, and all Jensen would’ve had to do was turn his head and his lips would’ve been resting against Cougar’s forehead. Which he wasn’t going to. Because they didn’t do this. Not because he didn’t want to. Even though he desperately missed their casual intimacy and physical contact.

Except Jensen’s body didn’t seem to be listening, because when he brought his wandering thoughts back on track he realized his hand had sunk into Cougar’s hair entirely of its own volition, fingertips gently massaging his scalp.

Jensen stilled instinctively, freezing as though, if he kept perfectly still, he might avoid disturbing Cougar and explaining just what the hell he was doing. Which he would honestly really appreciate as he did emphatically not have an answer to that particular question. However, stopping had apparently been the wrong thing to do; Cougar immediately started stirring, lifting his head a little and blinking open his eyes (which was not adorable in the slightest, god dammit). Jensen continued to make like a statue, even holding his breath like Cougar was only sensitive to movement and might that way fail to notice the guy he’d been sleeping on a second ago. Jensen knew that plan had failed when Cougar froze himself, obviously registering their situation. Before Jensen could make up his mind how best to play the whole thing, Cougar shot up off the couch and strode towards the door.

The entire incident was too blatantly out of the ordinary to simply gloss over, dammit; if he let Cougar walk out of the room now, they’d just go back to business as usual. (As usual as business got these days, anyway.)

“Cougs!” he called out, and, miracle of miracles, Cougar actually halted in his tracks. Jensen, miracle of miracles, was at a loss for words. Here was his opening to address the elephant in the room, yet he hadn’t the first idea where to start. So he fell back on a stratagem he only rarely utilized, because he usually didn’t need to. “Talk to me.”

He usually didn’t need to ask because usually him and Cougar were in tune. They could read one another to the point where more than once they’d been suspected of mindreading by the members of their team. Only occasionally, when one of them was too messed up for their usual means of communication, did they resort to that three-worded prompt. For Jensen, it sharpened his focus, helping him to zero in on the issue at heart when it threatened to get buried under a diversionary verbal onslaught; for Cougar, it was the signal that he really needed to use his words this time, because Jensen was good but he couldn’t actually read minds. They also had an understanding that if one of them invoked that prompt, the other heeded it because it meant shit was serious.

Cougar remained poised in the doorway with his back turned, shoulders tense and jaw clenching like he was chewing on his words — or choking on them. Finally, he turned his head a fraction and spoke over his shoulder without looking back.

“Lo siento.”

With that, he left the room.

~~~

Jensen slumped back against the sofa. He hadn’t even realized he’d been straining forward, subconsciously willing Cougar to answer him, to grant him insight into that infuriatingly impenetrable head of his. Which would really come in useful right about now because Jensen was this close to losing his shit. Yeah, he’d given Cougar a fright, though he thought they’d established he hadn’t done it on purpose. Nonetheless, it apparently had Cougar so shaken up that he was losing sleep over it and had to physically reassure himself of proof of life every night. Which Jensen was more than happy to provide, even as he resented the necessity. What was getting to him was the complete one-eighty Cougar would do during the daytime. Mere resentfulness for Jensen’s actions didn’t really cut it by way of an explanation; Cougar’s usual response to Jensen’s lack of care for his own well-being was to go into aggressively protective mama bear mode, all but sitting on Jensen until he acknowledged his failure and promised to henceforth do better. Jensen also didn’t really want to believe Cougar was snubbing him due to some insecurity regarding his need for reassurance; he didn’t know Cougar to subscribe to any kind of posturing masculinity bullshit.

Jensen felt vaguely nauseous when another possibility occurred to him: There were still stretches of time he couldn’t recall; what if he’d said something to Cougar while he was out of it? What if his subconscious, seizing the opportunity when its keeper was down for the count, and what measure of restraint it usually imposed with it, had spilled all of Jensen’s dirty little secrets, and now Cougar knew all about those pesky feelings Jensen had caught for him? Maybe Cougar didn’t want to give Jensen false hope; therefore, while he sought him out when the night terrors came a-knocking (which, of course Jensen wouldn’t refuse him — he might be pining, but he wasn’t cruel), that was why he was taking the cold turkey approach in the cold light of day.

Only, it wasn’t working. Couldn’t work, since Jensen was already hooked, and while it was to Cougar’s credit that he wanted to make things easier for Jensen, he was approximately a lot of years too late. A saying about barn doors and horses came to mind.

Which made this whole endeavor eminently ridiculous. And unnecessarily self-sacrificing to boot. That was just like the noble idiot, beating himself up over something out of his control. Since all was lost for Jensen anyway, it made no sense for Cougar to torture himself and deprive himself of rest because he was trying to keep Jensen at a distance.

Decision made, Jensen levered himself off the sofa, and stormed after Cougar. Only, he wasn’t in the kitchen, nor in any of the other rooms. By the time Jensen had checked even Clay and Aisha’s bedroom (at great personal risk, he might add; just because she wasn’t there at that moment didn’t mean she wouldn’t still have his balls later on), he was officially pissed off. All right, so things were a little awkward, but this was getting ridiculous. Since when did Cougar run away from anything? Hoping Cougar hadn’t actually done a runner, because on top of exhausted Jensen was now also sore and in no state to chase after anyone, Jensen slammed open the patio door.

“Cougs!”

Ok, maybe the yelling was a tad excessive, sue him, they were having this out now, and if Cougar really had left hearing range, the chicken, he was seriously going to—

“Here,” came the guarded response from his right.

Jensen spun around and felt the wind go out of his sails. Cougar was sitting on one of the overturned crates that someone had stacked there, leaning back against the wall behind him like his strings had been cut. Staring out at the gathering dusk, all the gloomier thanks to the gently misting rain, he looked defeated, diminished somehow. It wasn’t a look Jensen liked on him, so he leaned on the wooden balustrade of the patio and went for purposely nonchalant before he could stop himself.

“What’s up?” Jensen cringed inwardly as soon as the words left his mouth. Real smooth, dumbass.

At first Cougar didn’t show any sign that he’d heard, continuing to stare absently ahead of himself until Jensen started to shift restlessly, folding his arms defensively because maybe that hadn’t been the most mature approach, but he was desperate, dammit. Then Cougar spoke to his clasped hands. “Lo siento.”

“For what?”

“I did not mean for you to suffer for my failings.”

Wait, what? Jensen held up a hand.

“Whoa, back up. Failings? What are you talking about?”

Cougar hesitated, keeping his eyes fixed on his clenching hands, and Jensen meant to keep quiet and give him the space to speak in his own time, he really did.

“Is this still about you doing your utmost to save my ass? Which you did, successfully, by the way. Because I don’t think you can technically speaking call that a failure, right? In fact, if you succeed in achieving your goal, that’s pretty much the opposite of a failure, so it seems to me—”

“No,” Cougar mercifully cut him off, “I am not still talking about that.” He raked an agitated hand through his hair. Why wouldn’t he look at Jensen? “I have been trying to keep my distance.”

There was a rushing starting up in Jensen’s ears. This was it. The inevitable had happened and Cougar had grown tired of him. It always came to this in the end, but Jensen had — foolishly — let himself believe that things with Cougar were different. Him and Cougar jibed so well Jensen had thought that maybe their relationship wouldn’t be ground up by the sharp edges of Jensen’s personality. He should’ve known it was too good to be true. Time to wake up and smell the humus.

Cougar had stood up and was saying something. He should probably pay attention. Cougar was a decent guy; if he was letting Jensen down easy, as it were, he deserved to be listened to.

Cougar had clearly noticed Jensen’s brief absence, for he was by now standing in front of him, looking worried, arms slightly extended towards Jensen as if he wasn’t sure whether touch would be welcomed or even tolerated. Jensen felt his gut lurch guiltily at the uncharacteristically tentative gesture; Cougar should never feel uncertain about the place he had in Jensen’s life, even if he didn’t want it.

“Jake,” Cougar was saying, by the sound of it not for the first time. When Jensen refocused his gaze on him, he continued, dropping his hands now that he was apparently convinced he wouldn't have to catch Jensen. “It’s not because of anything you did.”

Jensen felt a slightly hysterical laugh bubbling up inside him. “Really? It’s not me, it’s you?”

Cougar frowned, possibly unimpressed with Jensen’s flippancy. “Yes.”

Jensen was starting to feel a little ill. In the face of Cougar’s serious tone and the palpable tension in the air he feared that if he opened his mouth either his foot would enter or the contents of his stomach exit it, so he kept quiet for once.

“In our line of work,” Cougar went on, dropping his eyes, “growing too close is . . . not a good idea.”

Bullshit.

“In our line of work,” Jensen retorted heatedly, “it’s the only way to survive.”

If he’d hoped to get a rise out of Cougar, he was disappointed. If anything, Cougar grew even more subdued, dropping back down onto his crate before responding in a voice so low Jensen wasn’t sure if he meant to be heard.

“What if one of us doesn’t?”

“What?”

Cougar met Jensen’s eyes, gaze apprehensive. “Survive.”

Jensen was growing more and more uneasy by the second. He couldn’t help trying to bring the whole conversation back onto more familiar ground. With the amount of dumb shit the Losers did on the regular, if Jensen started to contemplate how likely any of it was to kill them, he’d develop a serious case of the screaming heebie-jeebies faster than you could say “borderline suicidal”.

“Honestly, Cougs, if all the shit we’ve been through so far hasn’t managed to kill us, I’m not sure there’s a lot out there that actually could.”

 _That_ got a reaction. Cougar shot up from his perch, eyes flashing, and got right up in Jensen’s face.

“What we just went through nearly did!” he hissed. “You almost didn’t walk away this time. You—,” he slammed his hand into Jensen’s chest, “you did not have to see — All that blood! Do you know what that looked like? What it did to me? I thought—” He cut himself off abruptly, reining in his outburst with jaw and fists tightly clenched. As if he had to hold himself back with all his might. He turned away with a bitten-off curse and took a couple of steps away from Jensen, coming to a rigid stop with his back turned.

This gave Jensen a measure of privacy to pick his jaw back up off the ground. Sure, Jensen knew that Cougar’s legendary self-control harnessed a temperament that wasn’t to be underestimated, but it usually expressed itself non-verbally, say through mysterious and unlikely injuries. Jensen thought of Cougar’s fingers so frequently wrapped around his wrist, like he was checking for a pulse.

_I thought—_

Cougar had thought Jensen dead.

Jensen’s mind turned to the memory of the dead cat he’d found one winter when he was little. It had been slain by another animal, and to his child’s eye the whole thing had looked like some psychopath’s murder scene. He remembered how vividly the brilliant red had stood out against the white snow and how he’d marveled that so much blood could come from such a small creature. Now that he knew firsthand the scary amount of blood that could come out of a human he could very well imagine that the scene Cougar had come upon must’ve looked gruesome.

Maybe Cougar’s issue wasn’t that he’d dreaded the possibility of Jensen dying under his care, but that he’d thought he’d been too late, that he’d failed to save Jensen. So he intended to what, cop out? Just take himself out of the equation, problem solved? Screw that for a game of soldiers.

“Tell me,” he addressed Cougar’s back, “is it the guilt that’s eating you — misplaced, by the way, because again, hello, still alive — or do you actually believe you’re a danger to me?” He knew goading Cougar was a dick move, but what the hell else was he supposed to do; it was the only way to provoke any reaction, it seemed.

Cougar’s fist twitched. Taking in the angry line of his shoulders Jensen wondered if he might get punched after all. But when Cougar turned it was only half-way, leaving him facing the steadily increasing rain and Jensen unable to read anything in his profile. Jensen was about to do some more inadvisable needling when he noticed that Cougar’s hand had opened and his fingers were describing the small, absent motions he did when words were giving him trouble.

Jensen felt his anger deflate. Of course Cougar wasn’t being deliberately obstinate to spite him. This sort of thing didn’t come easy to him, and he was visibly struggling with it; Jensen wouldn’t help anyone by being a brat. They weren’t working against each other, after all. They were both interested in working this out.

Hopefully.

When Cougar finally spoke, his voice sounded tightly controlled, as if it was costing him a lot to say even this much — or perhaps only this much.

“If you don’t survive, I don’t survive.”

Well, that was just— that was so many levels of unacceptable. Not to mention patently ridiculous — if anything, it was the other was round. Cougar would be fine even without Jensen, but a world without Cougar— just, no. Jensen's mind shied away from the very possibility. It didn’t bear contemplating.

“Oh please,” Jensen scoffed, “you’re the Cougster. You’re the baddest ass to ever bad-ass, ain’t nothin’ gonna bring you down. Me, on the other hand, now _that’s_ a different story, _but_ , as we’ve already established, you’re indestructible, so lucky me!” Whoops, someone was on a roll. Better stop, before something truly embarrassing spilled out.

Cougar was shaking his head. “You _think_ — But you don’t _know_ . . .”

“Cougs—”

“No.” Cougar rounded on him, advancing a few steps towards him, voice low but urgent. “Listen!” He stabbed an index finger at his own chest as if to add, _to me_. “I could die any day.”

“Cougs—”

“I could. So you—,” he punctuated this by jabbing his forefinger into Jensen’s chest, “you must—” Here, Cougar’s hand formed into a loose sort of claw, as if he were about to reach into Jensen’s chest, but he rested it gently over Jensen’s heart. “Contain the damage.”

Contain the — what? “What?” Was Cougar suggesting _Jensen_ take himself out of the equation? What, just flick a switch and not care about Cougar anymore, easy as you please? Did he think he was disposable to Jensen, that any old sniper would do? Jensen may be a flake, but surely Cougar knew he wasn’t that fickle.

Cougar appeared lost in his head when he continued, eyes set absently on his curled hand. “For me — it’s too late.” He shook his head again, looking defeated. “I should stay away.” Oh, not this again. Jensen might have gotten worked up about the fact that Cougar kept trying to . . . dump him or what the hell ever, were it not for the resignation and self-recrimination audible in Cougar’s quiet voice. “For your sake. You can still—,” he curled the hand still resting on Jensen’s chest into a fistful of Jensen’s t-shirt. “Protect yourself. You need to stay away.”

It was getting harder and harder not to reach out in turn, to put his hand over the one on his chest or pull Cougar in by his rigid shoulders. Cougar was so close, and in obvious distress, and Jensen ached to comfort him, to overcome this distance that had arisen insurmountable between them and reassure him that everything would be alright.

He couldn’t get his head around the fact that Cougar was warning him off, warning him to _stay away_ , _for your sake_. Jensen would have scoffed at the melodrama, if he didn’t know that Cougar wasn’t the type to indulge in histrionics. But why now? Ok, maybe this had been a particularly close shave, but it wasn’t his first brush with death by any stretch of the imagination. What had changed?

God knew they’d always been close, even the other Losers frequently commented on it. For all their joking he couldn’t deny that “codependent” probably wasn’t very far from the truth. Why was Cougar getting cold feet now? What had changed to make him break the first rule of the Losers: Don’t talk about or otherwise acknowledge the fact that their occupation was a fucked-up shit show that was going to get them killed, most likely in an abrupt and exceedingly violent fashion, and that the close bonds they’d formed as a team, so necessary for their survival, were going to fuck those of them that outlived the others up even further once it did.

And why did Cougar think he could spare Jensen, as if it were different for Jensen than it was for him? Cougar was the closest friend Jensen had ever had — hell, the closest relationship of any kind, if he was honest with himself. Even without knowing the true nature of Jensen’s feelings for him, surely Cougar knew that Jensen couldn’t possibly grow any more attached than he already was. Knew that it would absolutely devastate Jensen to lose him.

But what if he didn’t? Jensen felt a churning sense of nausea sink into the pit of his stomach at the thought. Cougar was his one unwavering constant, something that until recently he never would have doubted, but he felt so unsettled by this whole mess that he didn’t know if his most visceral foundation held true any longer. Maybe Cougar did think Jensen that flighty. The thought stung. Could he really think so little of Jensen? He was evidently under the impression that he was in deeper than Jensen. _You need to stay away_. Well, bull fucking shit to that. Yeah, there was a part of Jensen that was apparently thirteen years old and currently squealing into a pillow because _Cougar said he liked me!_ It was nice to know one was appreciated, sue him. Meanwhile, the rest of him couldn’t decide whether to be angry or heartbroken that Cougar didn’t know Jensen was so fucked in the head for him it wasn’t even funny. Cougar needed to hear that — well, maybe not _that_ , exactly. But he couldn’t chance Cougar not knowing how much he meant to Jensen, how loved he was. Now, if he could only figure out a way to say all that without completely spilling his guts and fubaring their entire friendship.

While Jensen had been lost in this head, Cougar hadn’t moved except to bow his head, and his hand hadn’t relinquished its white-knuckled grip, like a manifestation of the strength Cougar had admitted he didn’t have to pull away.

Jensen swallowed.

“Listen, Cougs . . .” He drew a fortifying breath, struggling to collect his thoughts, until it left him again in a heavy exhale. “You’re it, man.” When Cougar’s head snapped up, he shrugged one shoulder a little helplessly. “What, you think I’m gonna find someone else who gets me like you do?”

That’s what it all came down to, really, in the end. Even if he hadn’t fantasized about a future with Cougar that included a white picket fence (much), Jensen couldn’t imagine a future without Cougar. Couldn’t imagine himself without Cougar.

So he let it show on his face; didn’t try to maintain composure, to affect detachment, to _contain_ anything. Maybe, if he couldn’t find the words to let Cougar know how he felt, he could show him some measure of it instead. Holding Cougar’s gaze, he raised one hand to carefully place it over the one Cougar still had curled in his t-shirt.

He must have conveyed _something_ , all right. Cougar’s searching gaze turned wide-eyed with realization, then frantic with denial, and Jensen got the sinking feeling that maybe he’d miscalculated in a big way. 

“Cougs . . .”

Cougar was shaking his head, as if rejecting what he was seeing, and Jensen was going to deal with the blade that twisted in his heart later (and by "deal" he meant shove it as far down as it would go), because right now Cougar looked about two seconds from bolting. So Jensen forced out a laugh he hoped conveyed faux offence with his usual brand of exuberance. “You really find me that repulsive? Ouch. That’s hurtful, man.”

It didn’t appear to register with Cougar. He had fixed his unseeing gaze on their hands still on Jensen’s chest, where, in a reversal of their new normal, Jensen was the one who hadn’t let go. Cougar’s breathing was growing agitated, and his words barely made it out around it.

“You— you can’t—” He lifted his eyes to meet Jensen’s again, and Jensen was struck by the terror he could see in them. Cougar wasn’t disinterested, or disgusted, or offended; he was _afraid_. Jensen moved toward him instinctively, needing to do something, moving with him even when he backed away because he needed to fix this, dammit.

“Cougs . . .”

“Don’t—” Cougar stopped in his tracks, using the hand he still had curled on Jensen’s t-shirt to stop Jensen, too. His movements were tight, as if barely restrained, and his eyes were pleading. “Don’t.”

Jensen felt sick, and in his attempt at damage control he wasn’t having much more success with his words than Cougar. “Look, this doesn’t have to — I understand if you don’t feel — We can just ignore—”

Underneath his own hand, Jensen felt Cougar spread his hand and press the flat of his palm against Jensen’s chest. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Jensen burst out, too loud for the close space they shared. “What don’t you want me to do, huh, care about you? Cause I got news for you: You’re too fucking late.” He spread both arms out to present himself. “Hook, line, and sinker, baby. So if you want to tell me to back off and get lost, well, I can’t stop you. But know that it won’t be for my sake.” He met Cougar's gaze. “You’ve got me, like it or not.”

Cougar was staring at him with a pained turmoil that soon became unbearable. Turning his head, Jensen cut his gaze to the gathering dusk, wondering if they could stand there long enough for his growing fatigue to take care of the awkwardness for them. He cleared his throat.

“Right. Good talk. I’m just gonna . . .” He pointed towards the door, but before he could move, the hand on his chest once again closed into a fist, tugging him forward by his t-shirt for Cougar to lean in and press his lips, ever so gently, to Jensen’s cheek, right at the corner of his mouth. Before Jensen had really realized what was happening, Cougar was pulling away, stepping back to put more space between them. While Jensen was still trying to find his tongue, Cougar closed his eyes briefly with a soft exhale, before turning and disappearing through the back door without looking back.

Jensen was left staring at the place where he’d just stood, enveloped in the encroaching darkness of a nightfall veiled with clouds.

~~~

Once again Jensen found himself woken in the middle of the night. This time, however, it was because Cougar came stumbling into his room. Jensen was halfway to sitting before he knew it.

Cougar didn’t _stumble_.

Yet there he was, making a beeline for Jensen’s bed and looking so disoriented that for a second, Jensen thought he might have taken up sleepwalking.

Trying to keep the alarm out of his voice, Jensen managed to rasp out an aborted “Cougs?” before Cougar was upon him — literally. Having reached the bed his legs seemed to give way and he all but collapsed onto it, leaving Jensen with his arms full of trembling sniper.

“Cougs!” For an absurd moment, Jensen thought he’d fainted, but the two fistfuls of Jensen’s t-shirt he had a death grip on told a different story. They also gave Jensen a pretty good idea as to the cause of what seemed to be a full-blown panic attack. Jesus.

Good thing he was a seasoned Cougar wrangler. That was definitely something he could fall back on. Absolutely no need to panic whatsoever.

“Cougs, hey, let’s — here, come on. Lie back. There we go.” To be fair, Jensen wasn’t left with much of a choice; he was holding much of Cougar’s weight braced awkwardly on one arm while the other had come up instinctively to catch his fall. Anyway, Jensen would bet his second most trusty computer that the shaking could at least in part be attributed to sleep deprivation, so getting horizontal was the most reasonable course of action. When Jensen lowered them back onto the pillow in as controlled a manner as possible, Cougar curled even further in on himself, clinging to Jensen as if afraid he’d slip from between his hands. Fierce tremors continued to race through his body, and his breathing was rapid and unsteady. Getting both arms securely around him, Jensen ran one hand in a soothing line along Cougar’s spine, because he might not know what the fuck he was doing, but he’d be damned if he just lay there with his thumb up his ass while Cougar came apart in his arms.

“Hey. Hey, Cougs. C’mon, it’s all right . . .  I’m all right. We’re ok.” Well, fuck knew _that_ wasn’t true. “We’re gonna be ok. It’s _us_ , man, we always come through.” He had to believe it. A world where that wasn’t true was so inconceivable as to be incomprehensible. Yet saying it out loud, a terrifying thought overcame Jensen: Maybe he had been ignorant to make that assumption. Maybe his unquestioning conviction that he and Cougar could withstand any rocky sea no matter how fierce the storm was more akin to a blind faith that didn’t allow him to examine just how steadfast their relationship really was — or wasn’t. Suddenly Jensen had to struggle to keep his voice even, and he wasn’t sure it was only Cougar’s fears he was allaying.

“It’s all right. We’ll be fine, my skeptical friend, just you wait and see. For now, just breathe. Breathe with me. There we go. Baby steps, buddy. Just keep breathing.” Concentrating on keeping his own breathing calm and even for Cougar to focus on helped Jensen not to freak the fuck out himself, and he could feel the trembling gradually begin to subside as he continued to uphold a stream of softly spoken words. By the time it ran dry, Cougar had settled against Jensen’s chest and was breathing evenly. Very evenly. In fact —

Yup. Cougar was definitely asleep, deeply so by the looks of it. His hands were still clutching Jensen’s t-shirt, but his grip had lost its white-knuckled quality, and while his face still bore the echo of that tension he seemed to be permanently carrying lately he looked more relaxed than he ever did when awake. The panic attack, following too many days with too little sleep, had clearly taken it out of him. Cougar could function on awe-inspiringly little sleep; he had to be beyond exhausted to sack out on top of Jensen like that. Which, obviously, was the sole reason why Jensen carefully reached for the blanket that had slipped down when he’d sat up earlier and, equally as carefully, tugged it up to cover them. It was the sole reason why he wrapped both arms cautiously but securely back around Cougar and it was the sole reason why he refused to feel guilty for holding Cougar close and soaking up his warmth and reveling in his comforting weight pressed against his side.

It was also the reason why Jensen felt absolutely guilty for illicitly indulging like this and why his heart was breaking in kind of a big fucking way because the only reason Cougar hadn’t bolted as soon as he’d calmed down was that apparently his body literally couldn’t take the stress of worrying about Jensen any longer. And Jensen hated it, hated the whole stalemate they’d found themselves in, because he and Cougar were _never_ this out of sync, and he hated feeling so shitty for so obviously rattling Cougar like he didn’t think anything could and he hated that he didn’t have the first clue how to fix this. Hated that now he found himself holding Cougar in his arms and this was everything he’d ever wanted, and it was killing him because it took Cougar having a panic attack for him to get it.

Unguarded, Jensen studied the dearly familiar lines of Cougar’s face, those graceful cheekbones and the dark lashes fanning out over them and the fine lines around his eyes, and his heart constricted and his next breath wouldn’t come. There wasn’t room in his chest; without so much as a by-your-leave it was bursting with how goddamn beautiful Cougar was and how indispensable. Mortifyingly, Jensen felt the wet heat of tears pricking at the back of his eyes. He honestly couldn’t even blame his body for attempting this last-ditch emergency pressure release for all the shit he was feeling; he needed Cougar in his life, and he wanted to give Cougar so much, and Cougar’s rejection terrified him, and it all amounted to Cougar being so unbearably out of his reach it was a wonder that he hadn’t yet blown a gasket.

Jensen caught sight of Cougar’s hands, looking oddly childlike curled into his t-shirt, and all of a sudden he just didn’t fucking care anymore. This wouldn’t last. As soon as Cougar regained consciousness, he’d be out of there like his ass was on fire, and if this was the only time Jensen was going to experience this, he was damn well going to make the most of it. So what if he was treasuring these stolen moments like a thief in the night. Judging by their conversation earlier, he wasn't sure he was ever going to get more such opportunities. If he cherished these chances to indulge in the fantasy of what would never be in the privacy of his own mind, no one needed to be the wiser.

So Jensen gently brushed a strand of Cougar’s hair out of his sleeping face and let himself give in to the pretense that Cougar would still be there come morning. He meant to stay awake, to savor this as long as he could, but in the end it didn’t take very long at all until Cougar’s scent and warmth and reassuring solidness sent Jensen to sleep.

~~~

To say Jensen woke from a hand curled around his wrist would’ve been untrue; that was old news by now. No, this time it came with the added bonus of the warm weight of a body pressed up all along his left side, a body held securely in place by Jensen’s arm, head resting heavily on Jensen’s chest. The previous night came crashing over him and he tried not to tense up too noticeably as a sudden and overwhelming flight or fight instinct surged through him like a shock of adrenalin because it was definitely morning, there was light coming in the window and everything, and Cougar was still in his fucking bed and for all that Jensen had longed for this, right then he was trying not to freak right the hell out because he didn’t know if this meant he was going to get to keep it.

“Breathe,” said Cougar’s voice, from right up and fucking close.

Right. So Cougar was definitely awake. Awake and in Jensen’s bed and stroking his thumb over the inside of Jensen’s wrist, and maybe if he just pretended they did this all the time and didn’t call attention to any of it he could hold on to it a while longer.

Of course he couldn’t just keep his mouth shut for once in his fucking life.

“See, now I know I’m dreaming. The real Cougar would’ve been halfway to Timbuktu by now.”

He knew he was being kind of an asshole but he was confused and hurting and had just had the best night’s sleep in his entire goddamn life with Cougar wrapped in his arms and he didn’t know what to do anymore.

He hadn’t really expected anything else, but his heart still sank when he felt Cougar shifting, and he let his arm fall to his side as Cougar lifted himself off of his chest. He didn’t move away any further, though, and Jensen could practically feel that intense stare boring into him. And found himself almost hoping for a quick and merciful end. Anything to break that awful stalemate and finally clear the air and let him breathe more easily again. He still didn’t open his eyes, though.

Cougar wasn’t having it. “Look at me.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Jake.”

There was something in his voice — subdued and forceful and something just short of precatory — so fundamentally unlike Cougar that Jensen’s eyes opened almost of their own accord.

Cougar was hovering over Jensen even closer than he’d expected, propped up on one elbow while his other hand stayed wrapped around Jensen’s wrist. It was absolutely no fair for him to do his silent staring routine to wait Jensen out when Jensen was trapped under him with no escape. They both knew that was a surefire way to kick-start Jensen’s motormouth in no time flat.

“Ok, you know I can’t see shit, if you’re doing the silent communication I’m gonna have to grab my glasses real quick—” Jensen started, turning his head to look for them in what absolutely wasn’t a bid to buy some time or perhaps even prompt Cougar to move and give him some space. Before he could work up to a good stalling, however, Cougar derailed him completely by catching his jaw and turning his head back to face him.

Time itself became suspended for an endless moment in which Jensen swore neither of them breathed and his heart tried to make up for it by doing double time, slamming itself against his ribs with such abandon that Cougar could probably feel its echo where his hand rested against Jensen’s neck. He was almost certain he was still dreaming and at the same time had never felt more aware of his senses, every single one of which seemed to go into overdrive as Cougar leant down to close the remaining distance.

The real world seemed to recede ever further into the background, the only thing of any bearing unfolding between the two of them as Jensen’s eyes fell shut again and then Cougar’s lips were on his and his heart, that had previously been racing like it was going for fucking gold, leapt into his stomach with an almighty lurch and Jensen was going to have to sit it down for a proper talk one of these days because that kind of behavior just couldn’t be healthy for an internal organ and that was about the last coherent thought he had because _holy shit_ Cougar was kissing him, they were kissing, kissing was definitely a thing that was happening, morning breath be damned. Jensen’s entire body seemed to light up upon first contact, and Cougar must have noticed because that first careful press of lips almost instantly picked up momentum, unleashing a heat in the slide of lips that sparked a fire between them. When Cougar’s lips parted to suck on Jensen’s lower one insistently, Jensen couldn’t help the moan that escaped him. Seizing the opportunity to scrape his teeth over Cougar’s upper lip in retaliation, Jensen elicited a sound in turn that shot through him like an electric shock, thrilling and heady.

At some point, Jensen’s hand had found its way into Cougar’s hair, not that that was a huge surprise; Jensen had been fighting that particular temptation for longer than he cared to admit. Speaking of temptation, Jensen couldn’t resist closing his hand into a fist on those wonderfully soft strands. The reaction was instantaneous. Cougar’s whole body jerked, and he let out another sound that was equally as electrifying and easily as addictive.

“Jesus, Cougs,” Jensen breathed into the scant space between them, voice already embarrassingly hoarse.

Cougar brushed his lips against Jensen’s, like he wanted to delve in again, but instead he pulled back, and Jensen’s eyes, which he’d kept closed like he wasn’t certain Cougar mightn’t disappear if he opened them, sprang open instinctively. His gaze caught on Cougar’s mouth and refused to move any higher, even though — or perhaps because — he could feel Cougar staring at him. Jensen swallowed.

“I’ve had dreams that started just like this.”

Then —

“Ow,” Jensen jumped. Cougar had pinched him, none too gently, in the side. It served to jerk Jensen’s eyes up to meet Cougar’s, and what he saw there wasn’t teasing or playful or challenging, but a little bit wild and very serious and it left him short for breath.

This _was_ serious. This was Cougar letting him in and requesting admittance in return, and if Jensen knee-jerked with his customary brand of boisterous irreverence he’d blow this thing before it even got off the ground. Therefore, he was going to stop himself from throwing up his usual defenses (what, he wasn’t completely immature, he could self-reflect) and put it all on the line and pretend it wasn’t just about the scariest fucking thing he’d ever done.

“Ok,” he said, nodding his head a little dazedly. “Not a dream, got it.”

He couldn’t keep his eyes from darting back to Cougar’s mouth, thinking that he’d very much like to explore this not-a-dream for everything it had to offer and apparently Cougar was on the same page, or perhaps Jensen was simply talking out loud again, for Cougar surged forward, reclaiming Jensen’s lips and Jensen surrendered willingly. He buried his newly freed hand in Cougar’s hair as well, reveling in the fact that he _could_ , as Cougar shifted more fully onto him, sliding a leg in between Jensen’s and there went Jensen’s breath again. He bit down on Cougar’s lip again because god _damn_ , those noises, and this time, Cougar retaliated in kind, which had Jensen clenching his hands entirely without conscious input and the resulting growl torn from Cougar’s throat shot straight to Jensen’s dick via his spine and Jesus _fuck_ , the feedback loop was going to vibrate him right out of his skin.

It felt like Cougar was attempting to do the same, and maybe climb into Jensen’s skin in the process, the way he was clinging on. When Jensen tried to get a little space between them, because why the hell were they wearing so many clothes, Cougar just clung harder, digging his arms under Jensen’s shoulder blades and holding on. Even though Jensen was having trouble scrambling together enough braincells to come up with anything other than _hhgn_ he got the feeling that this was something they should maybe talk about, this development. Not that he wasn’t 100% on board with it; not like this wasn’t more than he could ever have hoped for and never thought he would get. It was hard not to believe it was too good to be true.

He was maybe, perhaps, freaking out a little — not in a bad way, just in a freaking out kind of way. Only a few hours ago, pent up hopelessness had had Jensen at the end of his tether. Now the dam was bursting, and he didn’t know if he’d sink or swim when really, he felt like soaring.

When Cougar moved his mouth along Jensen’s jaw and down his throat, Jensen tried to gather himself (dear god, there were _teeth_ ) to slow things down a little. Before he could, Cougar buried his face in the crook of Jensen’s neck, arresting their progress, taking deep, careful breaths where he lay heavy atop Jensen. Moving his hands down, Jensen ran one down the length of Cougar’s spine while letting the other rest at the nape of Cougar’s neck.

“Ok?” he asked quietly, and it felt like too little for all that lay between them.

After a moment, Cougar nodded slightly against his neck.

And it settled Jensen, the simple reassurance. “Ok.”

Cougar indeed seemed calm enough, and while his breathing was a little unsteady, he was nowhere near as strung out as he’d been the night before. Then Jensen ran his thumb gently over the skin behind Cougar’s ear, and Cougar sort of melted into him, going boneless and heavy. Like there was no place he’d rather be. Or maybe Jensen was projecting; Cougar’s warm weight was surprisingly soothing, making Jensen feel safer and more sheltered than he ever thought he could or would want to be, and if he never had to leave Cougar’s embrace it would be too soon.

He couldn’t help his thoughts turning to the previous night, and the question was out of his mouth before he could worry about its prudence.

“What do you dream?”

Immediately, Cougar tensed up, tightening his arms around Jensen. Jensen kept up his soothing touches, but it didn’t seem be doing much good. Cougar was still tight as a bowstring when he spoke, haltingly, muffled in Jensen’s neck.

“You’re gone. I wake up. And I _know_ you’re not here anymore. I can _feel_ it...and I can’t breathe.”

Jensen felt his own throat constrict at the desolation in Cougar’s voice. He wound his arms around Cougar as tight as he could, aching to take away that burden he’d done nothing to deserve. His whole heart felt fit to burst, like it couldn’t contain everything he was feeling. The best he could do was hold on to Cougar for all he was worth.

And perhaps giving voice to his fears had been the right thing for Cougar to do; he was unwinding, relaxing into the heavy Cougar-blanket Jensen already knew he was going to grow addicted to. Recalling the previous favorable reaction, Jensen brought one of his hands back up to the nape of Cougar’s neck, caressing the delicate skin.

He almost couldn’t believe how things had changed; that luck had finally turned in his favor. Jensen felt his chest tighten, but for an entirely different reason this time. This was really happening. He had the man he— fuck it, the man he was in love with in his arms, and now he could love him unreservedly and without hiding. Unbidden, he felt that hot, tell-tale sting in his eyes once more. Jesus, he really was all over the place. Telling himself to cool it on the dramatics, Jensen took a steadying breath. Apparently, they were back in tune, because Cougar immediately raised his head and gave him a searching look.

Jensen responded with a smile that felt rather crooked on his face but that he meant with everything that he had.

“I’m good,” he reassured Cougar. “I’m . . . real good.”

Cougar hovered over Jensen in scrutiny for another moment. Then, apparently satisfied as to the veracity of that assurance, he aimed a smirk down at Jensen, instantly alight with animation.

“Remains to be seen.”

Jensen’s mouth dropped open in affected indignation. “Oh, that’s how it’s gonna be?”

Cougar merely cocked an eyebrow, and before Jensen had a chance to mount an offensive he fell on Jensen’s neck, this time with intent. Fuck, Jensen didn’t stand a chance. Working his way down Jensen’s throat with a liberal application of teeth, Cougar moved down Jensen’s body while Jensen’s hands slid back up until they resettled in Cougar’s hair. When Cougar reached his nipple, mouthing at it through the material of his t-shirt, Jensen’s grip tightened in anticipation, and Cougar bit down, hard. Jensen’s back arched off the bed, and he couldn’t bite back a strangled groan.

Cougar, having easily moved with Jensen’s sudden movement, sat up to straddle Jensen’s waist, stripping off his t-shirt in the same motion. Jensen was left staring up at the magnificent sight he presented, poised tall above him with an easy grace, lithe and arrestingly beautiful and his to touch. Caught in Cougar’s dark gaze, Jensen ran his hands up the outsides of Cougar’s thighs to his hips, bringing his right around to continue up the plane of Cougar’s stomach to his chest until Cougar caught it in both of his. Never breaking eye contact, Cougar brought Jensen’s hand to his lips and brushed Jensen’s knuckles against them before taking two of his fingers into his mouth. Jensen’s mouth ran dry, and he could scarcely draw breath as Cougar laved at the digits in blatant mimicry.

Needing to taste those damnable lips again, Jensen followed him up, regretfully withdrawing his hand in the process. Their lips met, hot and filthy, and Jensen’s tongue received the same indecent treatment his fingers had. Lamentably, he only got to indulge briefly before Cougar was pulling at the hem of his t-shirt, drawing it up and over his head. When Jensen went to lean back in, he received a push to the chest that sent him tipping back down onto the bed.

It only served to turn him on. He shot Cougar his best salacious grin.

“Bossy.”

Cougar merely ran his gaze down Jensen’s outstretched body and back as if to reiterate who was setting the pace before following Jensen down and proceeding to drive him absolutely crazy with his mouth and teeth and tongue. Starting at Jensen’s throat, he worked his way over Jensen’s collarbone and down his sternum, taking his sweet time and winding Jensen up the further south he got. His hands were following him down Jensen’s sides, just firm enough to not quite tickle and keep Jensen’s writhing in check even as they exacerbated it. God, the bastard really knew him.

Apparently, Jensen really had lost all hope of controlling his vocal faculties, because he could feel Cougar smiling like a shark against the skin just below his navel and really, he was going to be smug, now? Pushing himself up onto his elbows with the intent of saying something to the effect of egos and the undue inflation thereof, Jensen’s words died in his throat at the sight that greeted him. Cougar, stretched out between his legs, the long line of beautiful skin interrupted only by his briefs. He had his fingers hooked into the waistband of Jensen’s boxers and was giving him a look full of playful daring.

Jensen swallowed, but his voice was still hoarse when he challenged: “You waiting for a written invitation?”

Giving him a smirk that promised evil things, Cougar drew Jensen’s boxers down his legs and discarded them over the side of the bed. Then he moved back up, running his mouth hot along the inside of Jensen’s thigh and Jensen let himself fall back onto the pillow because even without glasses the visual was going to end proceedings before they even began. When Cougar reached the juncture of his thigh Jensen closed his eyes and dug his fingers into the bedding, and Cougar — stopped. Instead of continuing his trajectory, he stayed right where he was, lipping softly at the sensitive skin and letting his heated breath ghost over it. The asshole was waiting him out.

Jensen folded like a bad hand: “You bastard.”

He let out a harsh breath when Cougar’s teeth nipped at his skin and damn near choked on the inhale when Cougar swallowed him down without further ado.

“Oh, fuck!”

After that, it became a matter of hanging on for dear life as Cougar proceeded to take him apart with mind-blowing determination. Trying not to buck Cougar off as he sent liquid heat shooting through Jensen’s veins, Jensen stuffed a knuckle into his mouth and bit down hard which did absolutely nothing to stifle the noises that came spilling out but who even gave a shit because holy mother of _fuck_ , that tongue definitely needed a license because what it was doing to Jensen’s dick couldn’t be legal. Jensen’s other hand had found its way into Cougar’s hair, and if he tightened his grip a little to feel that growl up close and personal, there was no one there to judge him. If he carefully relaxed his hold when Cougar gave him a toothy warning, well, that was neither here nor there either. Needing to hold onto something, he transferred his other hand from his mouth to the headboard, grabbing a firm hold of it.

When Cougar’s hand turned its attention to Jensen’s balls, he knew the end was nigh. The fire setting his nerves ablaze was collecting in his gut and he could feel his pulse hammering through his body right down to his toes. He tried to gather enough breath to string together at least one coherent word of warning.

“God — Cougs, Jesus!”

Admittedly not his best work but it seemed to get the message across. Pulling off with a filthy noise that drew a whimper from Jensen’s throat, Cougar took a tight hold of Jensen’s cock, providing a perfect circle for his now unrestrainedly bucking hips.

“Fuck! Oh — fuck. Oh shit—”

Thrusting up into Cougar’s grip, Jensen felt him run one thumb along his sensitive head while the other slid across his perineum, and that was all she wrote. With an incoherent cry, he flew apart, spine arching off the bed and blood pounding in his ears.

Collapsing back onto the mattress, Jensen let go of the headboard and blinked his eyes open, surveying the ceiling for a moment. Then he lifted his head just in time to see Cougar, kneeling up again, stick one of his fingers into his mouth to clean it of Jensen’s come.

“Jesus Christ,” he croaked, as a renewed jolt of arousal shot through him. Cougar met his gaze, eyes dark with desire, and swiped his fingers through the come on Jensen’s stomach. Before he could bring his hand back to his mouth, however, Jensen intercepted it, catching his wrist and tugging it towards him. He closed his lips around Cougar’s finger and drew it out again with sloppy suction. Cougar’s gaze turned downright predatory.

Jensen couldn’t help surging up to catch Cougar’s lips, reddened and slick, and licking the taste of himself out of his mouth. Executing a neat flip to reverse their positions he got Cougar on his back, hovering over him and letting a wolfish grin spread across his face.

“My turn.”

Cougar stretched luxuriously beneath him.

Straightening up so he was kneeling over Cougar, Jensen decided that, since Cougar had already shown he had a bit of a filthy streak, he could do with a little further riling up. Jensen dragged his own fingers through the mess on his stomach and, shooting Cougar a lascivious look through lowered eyelids, licked them clean with as much tongue as possible. Yeah, he was being obvious, but it was working beautifully; Cougar was riveted, nostrils flaring and eyes fixed on Jensen’s mouth. It was a heady feeling.

“See something you like?” Jensen smirked at him. Jensen definitely did; Cougar looked breath-taking stretched out on Jensen’s sheets, tenting his briefs obscenely, with his pupils blown and his hair still bearing the signature of Jensen’s hands.

Jensen was brought out of his revelry by Cougar nudging his knee against the one Jensen had planted between his legs. Apparently, he was taking Jensen at his word and expected him to fulfil his promise. Well, who was Jensen to leave him hanging?

Falling forward onto his elbows, Jensen brushed his lips over Cougar’s brief-clad cock, before starting upward (not without relishing the sharp exhale that prompted), mouthing his way up Cougar’s torso. He may or may not have lost himself a little in the taste and feel of the body under him, running his tongue over heated skin and marking it with scraping teeth. Cougar didn’t seem to have any complaints, sinking his hands into Jensen’s hair, apparently without intention of letting Jensen move even an inch away — until, that is, Jensen evidently took a little too much time with his neck, but really, who could blame him? Tendons and Adam’s apple, animated with Cougar’s restless movement, presented an ever-changing territory holding endless fascination, in which to indulge Jensen would happily have spent the rest of his life. With an impatient growl, Cougar tugged Jensen’s head up in order to steal the breath right out of his mouth.

Jensen was pretty sure he’d had a plan here, but Cougar’s filthy tongue and slick lips were one hell of a distraction; add to that the bucking hips and the nails raking over his scalp and Jensen was this close to losing the plot entirely. How was he this riled up when he wasn’t the one still straining his underwear?

In a bid not to be entirely overwhelmed, Jensen caught one of Cougar’s wrists and brought it down to the mattress next to Cougar’s head, pressing down a little to give a nonverbal cue for him to keep it there. What he hadn’t reckoned on was for Cougar’s breath to hitch and his hips to kick up sharply, brushing his cock against Jensen’s thigh. Jensen stilled. Was he . . . ?

Telegraphing his intent, Jensen captured Cougar’s other wrist and pinned it to the bed as well, raising his head so he could watch Cougar’s face for his reaction. It came in the form of Cougar tilting his head back, the baring of his throat offset by the challenge in his raised chin, half-lidded eyes inviting and parted lips enticing.

Jensen couldn’t resist. He shifted up to put his weight on his hands, pushing Cougar’s wrists harder into the bed, and brought his thigh forward into firmer contact with Cougar’s eager cock. Cougar’s hips jerked up and his eyes slipped closed as his mouth dropped open on a broken-off groan.

“Holy shit.”

Upon Jensen’s breathless exhalation Cougar opened his eyes and the heat with which he met Jensen’s gaze made Jensen a little dizzy. Jensen really only squeezed Cougar’s wrists to anchor himself, but it earned him another cut-off sound and prompted the movement of Cougar’s hips to start up in earnest. Apparently tired of waiting for Jensen to get with the program, Cougar placed one foot on the mattress for leverage and began to roll his torso and hips in a fluid, sinful motion, arching up off the bed to rub off against the length of Jensen’s thigh, entirely unselfconscious, over and over again. It was the hottest goddamn thing Jensen had ever seen in his life.

“Jesus,” he rasped, sounding embarrassingly out of breath and if it came out almost reverently, what the hell ever; Jensen was about ready to worship on his knees, and not even in the dirty way. Cougar had tipped his head back against the pillow, presenting a delectable stretch of throat that was too much for Jensen to resist; he dropped to his elbows again, sliding his hands up to tangle his fingers with Cougar’s, and tasted the hot skin with hungry lips and sharp teeth. Cougar’s pulse was racing against Jensen’s mouth and his hold was tight on Jensen’s hands and his breath kept catching in those desperate little noises and Jensen just wanted to see him come apart, unrestrained.

“God, Cougs, you’re so fucking gorgeous,” he rasped into Cougar’s neck, making his way down to the crook of his shoulder and then back up along his jaw, desperate to get his mouth everywhere, preferably at once. “I want to see all of you, want to see you let go.”

Cougar did let go of one of his hands, but only to bury it in Jensen’s hair and pull him, if possible, even closer. Jensen dragged his tongue over Cougar’s jugular. “Come on, let me see you. I want to see you come all over yourself without putting a hand on you.”

Cougar’s second hand pulled free and joined its twin and Jensen thought of Cougar’s tendency to press close and seek nearness, and lowered himself more bodily onto Cougar, moving his thigh into the increasingly erratic movement of Cougar’s hips. Cougar’s writhing was bringing his thigh into contact with Jensen’s oversensitive cock, and the too-sharp shocks of sensation only spurred Jensen on.

“Fuck, I’m not even touching you and you’re gonna come, aren’t you. You’re going to rub off like this, all quick and dirty, make a mess of your pants.” Cougar’s breath hitched and his movements were growing a little bit wild, one hand raking its nails down Jensen’s back, and Jensen didn’t stop smearing his words into the skin of Cougar’s throat. “Let me see you. Let me see you come. Come on, come for me.”

With that, he sunk his teeth into Cougar’s jugular, and Cougar came with a quiet groan and an arching spine, shaking apart and clinging onto Jensen like his life depended on it. Jensen clung right back, winding his arms around Cougar and letting his weight sink into him.

Feeling a little dazed, Jensen was happy to lie in blissed-out silence and not think, listening to Cougar’s ragged breathing become steadier and feeling his calming heartbeat and reveling in the reality of what all this meant. By the time Cougar started stirring beneath him, running his fingers through Jensen’s hair, Jensen had grown giddy enough to need some sort of outlet. He propped himself up on his elbows, only to be confronted with a Cougar who looked so deeply relaxed he appeared to be boneless, a smug smirk playing around his lips — the proverbial cat that got its canary. Shooting Jensen a look through heavy-lidded eyes, he said in a gravelly voice that did things to Jensen’s recently-sated libido: “You dream about this?”

Apparently pleased at the look of outrage Jensen gave him in return, Cougar let his eyes slip closed again while his grin grew to Cheshire magnitudes of self-satisfied.

Well, Jensen couldn’t not kiss him.

~~~

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The ending is a bit abrupt for my liking. I might add a second chapter/epilogue kind of deal later, if fancy strikes. But as this got way out of hand already, I wanted to take a little breather lmao.


	2. Chapter 2

He must have drifted off again at some point because the next thing Jensen became aware of was a set of voices intruding on his conscience.

“I still maintain we don’t have conclusive proof.” Weird. That sounded a lot like Aisha.

“They’re in bed together. Naked!” Pooch this time, indignation audible in his voice.

“Circumstantial.”

“You just don’t want to pay up.” Ok, that was definitely Clay. Oh good, the gang was all here. If this turned out to be some kind of weird sex dream again – wait.

“Are you actually betting on your team mates’ love lives?” Jensen injected a fair bit of indignation into his own voice. That was low, even for the Losers. And why was Cougar tolerating this height of indignity?

“No!” Pooch again, even more indignant. “We _were_ betting on them, but now it seems you’ve settled the matter for us,” he continued pointedly, and Jensen was certain that if he were to lift his face out of Cougar’s neck he’d see a meaningful look directed Aisha’s way, too.

He stayed decidedly buried where he was. It was too early for this shit. (Never mind that he didn’t actually know what time it was. It was a matter of principle.)

“How do you even know they’re naked under there?” Dear God, she really needed to let this go. Incidentally, Jensen was immensely grateful that Cougar had at some point thought to pull up the covers far enough to preserve at least the most essential parts of their modesty.

“Really, you haven’t seen enough?” Thank you, Pooch. “I don’t know if my eyes will ever recover.”

 _Hey_. “Would you mind?”

“Not at all,” Aisha drawled, appreciation thick in her voice. Wait, what?

Raising himself up onto his elbows, Jensen turned his head toward the door and yup, sure enough, there stood the remaining three Losers, apparently not giving a single solitary fuck that this was weird even by their standards. Although both Clay and Pooch were currently giving Aisha an emphatic side-eye.

“Ok, one, are you seriously creeping in the doorway right now, because, I get that you want a piece of this but voyeuristic much? And two,” Jensen addressed Aisha, “is this your way of saying you guys are looking to spice up your relationship? Because I gotta say, the thought is a little disturbing, but it’s also not entirely unappeal-oohkay!”

Of course Cougar would choose that exact moment to spring into action, that action being taking a firm hold of Jensen’s cock, nearly causing him to collapse onto Cougar. Someone did not like the idea of sharing, it seemed.

Apparently, his voice shooting up several registers, while garnering him three sets of raised eyebrows, wasn’t enough of a hint for the peanut gallery. “I’m not suggesting you leave, but I do feel obliged to warn you that this show is about to get a lot less PG-13, so unless you’re fixing to get an eyeful…” Jensen was proud of how steady his voice was considering the sensitive material Cougar was currently handling.

Pooch was the first to turn on his heel after a muttered “Jesus Christ”. It took Clay wrapping an insistent hand around Aisha’s arm to get her to move, and then only after throwing them an inscrutable smirk.

“God, is it wrong that I’m a little turned on right now?” Jensen wondered aloud, before the hand tightening around his dick reminded him that no, it wasn’t, as long as he remembered who he was getting turned on by. “All right, easy on the merchandise,” he said breathlessly, even as his hips bucked into Cougar’s grip. “Thanks for the assist, by the way. You were a real help just now.”

Cougar slid his unoccupied hand into the hair at the back of Jensen’s head, entirely unapologetic.

“They’re gone, no?”

Jensen considered this.

“Fair enough.”

He lowered himself back down onto Cougar because a) full body contact, and b) kissing. Both were things Jensen still couldn’t believe he got to indulge in and didn’t think he would ever get enough of. The feeling of Cougar beneath him, tongue demanding insistent entrance, hand tightening in his hair, had him pressing close, wanting to soak it all up, take it in, let Cougar take him apart. And Cougar was doing his level best, sending heat running through Jensen’s veins as he moved his hand from Jensen’s dick (aww) to his ass (yay), pulling him closer still.

Jensen couldn’t help the groan that escaped him into Cougar’s mouth at the feeling of his hard-on grinding against Cougar’s boxer-clad one, which, why was he still wearing those, anyway? They had to be disgusting by now. Dwelling on the more prosaic side of things, another thought came to Jensen.

“Cougs…” He tried to tear his mouth away, which only led to Cougar biting down his throat instead, rendering him temporarily tongue-tied. “Cougs–” His second attempt was also derailed, this time by a truly wicked roll of Cougar’s hips that tore another groan from his lips. In a last-ditch effort Jensen heaved himself onto his elbows again, even though moving away was the last damn thing he wanted to do, because – “the door.” A turn of his head confirmed that, yes, those assholes had indeed left the bedroom door wide open.

Cougar, who was by that time scraping his teeth along Jensen’s jaw, only replied with a dismissive, “don’t care.”

“Well, I do,” Jensen retorted because sometimes the illusion of privacy was the only thing standing between the Losers and a complete leave-taking of general sanity. “Tell you what,” he struggled on valiantly, trying to concentrate despite the truly sinful rhythm Cougar had started up with his hips, “why don’t I get the door real quick, and you can get rid of these in the meantime.” He reached down and plucked at the waistband of Cougar’s boxer briefs.

With an exasperated huff, Cougar levered Jensen off of himself. Jensen, who hadn’t survived this long by not being adaptable, used his momentum to roll to his feet and sauntered across the room. If there was a little extra hip action going on, well, Jensen had it, so why not flaunt it.

Shutting the door firmly, Jensen turned around and was eminently glad he was still gripping the handle.

Cougar had already divested himself of his underwear and was now reclining on his elbows in all his naked splendor, eyeing Jensen up, and even from his position at the door the covetous hunger in Cougar’s gaze was impossible to miss.

Jensen swallowed.

Not that he hadn’t known Cougar was beautiful, but now, in the light of day, he finally got a chance to look his fill.

Cougar was absolutely breath-taking.

He was, and Jensen didn’t know how to deal. He was hopelessly, irremediably gone on Cougar, stupid in love with him, and he still hadn’t _told_ him.

“Waiting for an invitation?”

Cougar’s voice stirred him into action and he approached the bed, still feeling transfixed, drawn in by that compelling gaze. He reached the bed, reached for Cougar, and before he knew it he was on his back, Cougar braced above him, studying him with sharp, worried eyes. Trust him to immediately pick up on Jensen's sudden funk.

There was a strand of hair hanging in front of Cougar’s eye, and Jensen reached up to brush it out of his face, tucking it behind his ear, and he wasn’t trying to buy time, he really wasn’t, but he could see his hand trembling with tenderness he couldn't seem to contain, and he had to let Cougar know–

“What I said yesterday,” he started, eyes trained on the fingers he was still caressing Cougar’s hair with, “I mean it. I’m not just . . . scratching an itch, or whatever.” He grimaced at the thought. “I’m in. For good. If you’re not, that’s . . .” He tried to shrug a shoulder, pretty sure he missed indifference by a few miles. “Hey, c’est la vie, right? The point is –”

Cougar was, as usual, way ahead of him.

“Te amo,” he cut in, stopping Jensen dead in his tracks. His eyes jumped to Cougar’s, and the openness in them told Jensen everything Cougar hadn’t been able to say. He was aware his mouth was still open from being cut off mid-sentence and he suspected he was doing the deer in headlights thing again. He felt like he wasn’t quite in control, knowing he should probably say something but unable to vouch for whatever came out of his mouth.

“You do?” Ok, lousy start. Maybe try that again. “I mean, me too. You.”

Cougar’s lips twitched.

Jensen smacked him in the shoulder. “Shut up.”

Cougar broke into a grin and just like that, the solemnity of the moment was lifted. Jensen smacked him again but couldn’t help a grin of his own from spreading across his face. He suspected he wasn’t the only one overcome by a fit of giddiness, even though Cougar hid his by dropping his forehead to Jensen’s chest.

“Asshole,” Jensen said, not even trying to keep the affection out of his voice. Winding his hand more securely into Cougar’s hair, he wrapped his other arm around Cougar’s back, inordinately pleased by the fact that they could share this easy physical intimacy.

He soon grew serious again, however.

“I really do, you know,” he said quietly, stroking his thumb gently over Cougar’s skin. “Like, a scary amount.”

He heard Cougar swallow. “I know.”

Jensen drew a deep breath and let it out carefully.

“Great. Now that that’s settled, do you think we could get back to business, before I develop a cavity from all this mush. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting in touch with your emotions. Very healthy, go us! But there is a rather _pressing_ matter at hand –”

Cougar effectively silenced him by biting down sharply on his nipple, causing Jensen to arch into him, and in an instant the slide of skin against skin became charged with electricity.

Jensen involuntarily tightened his grip on Cougar’s hair, making that toe-curling growl rumble against his skin, and Jesus, that sound was going to be the death of him.

“Cougs – God, Cougs, get up here.” Jensen tugged at Cougar’s hair with intent this time, because he wanted to get at those lips, dammit, and when Cougar lifted his head the wild need in his eyes took Jensen’s breath away. Then Cougar fell on his lips and stole what little breath remained.

Jensen let his legs fall open, allowing Cougar to fit himself in between, and he did, fit right in, and Jensen bit down on the lip caught between his at the feeling of their cocks sliding together, slick with pre-come already. Cougar thrust against him in return and he couldn’t stop a groan from wrenching free.

“Shit…!”

Cougar shut him up again, his kiss filthy and demanding. Jensen dragged his nails down Cougar’s back until he reached his ass and could pull him in tighter, wanting him closer. Cougar responded by bucking his hips, rocking into him with abandon until Jensen had to tear his mouth away to gasp noisily for air. Tipping his head back exposed his neck to the hungry ministrations of Cougar’s teeth and tongue, biting and sucking in a way Jensen had no doubt would leave unmistakable marks for the others to tease him about. The thought of having Cougar’s claim laid on him for everyone to see only made his blood run hotter.

Jensen moved his hands up Cougar’s body again, feeling the play of muscles underneath smooth skin, so he could wind his fingers back into that beautiful hair.

“Jesus, Cougs…”

Cougar raised himself up on his elbows and Jensen would have protested the distance except it brought their lower bodies into even closer contact, making Jensen writhe, and how had he not known that simple friction could feel so damn good? The way Cougar was looking at him, with undisguised, deep-seated longing, as if they weren’t about as close as two people could feasibly get, was damn near unbearable. Jensen brought one hand down to cup Cougar’s cheek.

“I’m right here,” he whispered.

With a softly exhaled “Jake,” Cougar bent his head, resting his forehead against Jensen’s and they remained, for a moment, suspended in time, sharing the same breath.

Then Cougar tipped his head to claim Jensen’s lips and ran one hand like a brand down Jensen’s side, leaving a trail of fire in his wake, right down to his knee. He hitched Jensen’s leg up, allowing him to press closer still, and Jensen moaned helplessly into his mouth, bringing his other leg up to wrap both around Cougar’s waist. This gave him the leverage to meet Cougar’s every thrust, which he took shameless advantage of. Shameless probably being the key word – Jensen suspected he was painting a pretty wanton picture, desperate for more of that silken searing friction, unable to contain his broken groans, but fuck if he gave a shit. Plus, Cougar seemed to be enjoying the view; bracing himself on his hand, possibly for a bit of leverage of his own, his dark gaze was almost tangible, like he was seeing all of Jensen and enveloping him whole.

Then Cougar moved the hand gripping Jensen’s thigh around and encircled both of their cocks and Jensen nearly embarrassed himself right then and there. With a bitten-off curse he flung one hand up to brace it against the headboard, the better to push into the filthy grind of Cougar’s hips.

Cougar himself was a sight to behold, all coiled strength, chest heaving, breathing heavily through glistening lips, making Jensen want to make a mess of him. He tightened the hold his other hand still had on Cougar’s hair, earning a particularly unbridled thrust into an equally tightened grip.

“Fuck! God, Cougs, you feel so good. Feel fucking incredible. Shit, oh – yeah, just like that…” Jensen couldn’t stop the words from spilling out, though his voice grew hoarse and reedy, couldn’t not give voice to the overwhelming sensation of their cocks sliding together in the heated space of Cougar’s fist, the hard line of Cougar dragging along Jensen’s length, more and more sensitive with every stroke, the way Cougar’s thumb played over Jensen’s head at each pass. Jensen slid his hand from Cougar’s hair and gripped his arm instead, because they hadn’t had that conversation yet (though it promised to be . . . intriguing) and Jensen needed to hang on to something.

Cougar was watching him intently now, eyes aflame; being the center of his single-minded focus was a thrill as exhilarating as it was humbling. It left Jensen a little bit tongue-tied.

“…I got something on my face?”

Cougar slowed the movement of his hand until it was torturous and deliberate, gauging Jensen’s reaction rather than aiming to bring him closer to the edge. Jensen tried to squirm alluringly, to no avail.

“Come on, Cougs, you were being so nice to me. Don’t start being mean now –” He cut off on a whine at a particularly dirty twist of Cougar’s wrist. “Shit. Cougs, please. There’s no need for teasing, surely, we’re all friends here – fuck!” Another sharp twist, combined with dangerously narrowed eyes.

Ohh.

Letting his other arm drop to the bed above his head as well, Jensen stretched insolently, like he wasn’t burning up from the inside.

“Isn’t that right? Just a friendly little exchange between–” He didn’t get to finish.

Uttering a feral-sounding noise, Cougar reared back on his knees, pulling Jensen with him by the legs still slung around his waist and a hand at the small of Jensen’s back, so Jensen ended up with his ass near in Cougar’s lap, spine arching off the bed. Cougar’s other hand stayed wrapped around both their lengths, grip unrelenting. Jensen wasn’t left with a lot of breath to say much of anything else.

Especially when Cougar picked up his movement again. Talk about additional leverage; Cougar made good use of it, starting to fuck into the circle of his fist in earnest, and the obscene visual in concomitance with the equally debauched feeling was setting Jensen on fire.

If he’d felt exposed before, it was nothing to what he was feeling now, only his shoulders and head on the bed, legs spread wide to accommodate Cougar in between, feeling hot and flushed with arousal and exertion, entirely at Cougar’s mercy.

Jensen surrendered to it willingly.

He set both hands against the headboard, stretching out indulgently, but also in an effort to brace himself, closing his eyes briefly to lose himself for a moment in the all-consuming riptide of sensation being wrought upon him. Then Cougar shifted his grip on Jensen’s hip and Jensen’s eyes flew open with a gasp as red-hot sparks shot up his spine.

“Oh, fuck! Fucking – hell – !”

He was rapidly approaching the point of no return; heat was concentrating inside him, and the picture Cougar presented did nothing to cool him down. Breathing ragged, chest sporting a fetching blush of its own, and a strand of hair sticking to his forehead, his movements were growing ever more urgent, unrelenting strokes with which he drove Jensen relentlessly towards the edge as much as he chased his own release.

Jensen met his eyes and was caught in his gaze, the fervor therein telling him the only thing Cougar wanted was to see him come apart. He gave himself over to it, back arched, clenching his legs to ride Cougar’s thrusts. He became aware of a whimpering sort of sound that he suspected may have been carrying on for a while and might’ve been coming from him. Eh, Jensen dared anyone to find themselves at Cougar’s tender mercies and not announce it loudly and at length.

Now, there was an idea…

“Jake.”

Cougar’s low utterance made him realize that he’d apparently closed his eyes again. Peeling them open, Jensen locked eyes with Cougar at the same moment he imagined Cougar fucking into him, imagined what it would be like to feel him slide home over and over inside of him, driving him to ecstasy.

It proved to be too much for him.

With a strangled string of curses his orgasm overcame him and he shook apart, coming all over himself and Cougar too for good measure.

Cougar, who stroked him through it leisurely, as if his own urgency had abated along with Jensen’s. The hunger, though, still burned brightly in his eyes.

Jensen let his arms drop, drained of strength.

“Give me…give me a second. Be right with ya,” he got out around trying to regain his breath. He pointed a finger vaguely in Cougar’s direction. “Don’t you dare have all the fun without me.”

Cougar seemed content to wait him out, continuing to lazily move the hand still wrapped around both of them, giving Jensen intermittent jolts of overstimulation.

“Gah.” Jensen twitched with a particularly pronounced one and tried to sit up on his elbows. Tried being the operative word. “Good God, Cougar, what did you do to me? I’ve gone all…floppy.”

He could practically feel the smugness radiating off of Cougar.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Ok, then.

With a little effort Jensen managed to cross his arms behind his head. Closing his eyes, he made to settle in. “All right.”

He yelped at an especially sharp twist of Cougar’s hand – one that was administered solely to his sensitive dick.

“All right! Be gentle, please.”

Jensen’s eyes fell on Cougar’s cock, shining with pre-come and smeared with Jensen’s release.

Licking his lips, Jensen met Cougar’s eyes.

“Bring that up here.”

Without breaking eye contact, Cougar carefully unwound Jensen’s legs from around his waist, lowering them to the bed, and prowled up Jensen’s prone body until he was kneeling astride his waist, looking down at him through hooded eyes.

Jensen slid a hand up either of his thighs.

“Show me.”

Cougar took himself in hand, eyes slipping closed and head falling back a little. He’d appeared fairly composed until now, but it was unmistakable how tight he was wound, thighs trembling under Jensen’s hands, little jerks of his hips belying the indolent strokes of his hand. Jensen found himself captivated, almost reluctant to disturb the mesmerizing picture Cougar made. On the other hand…

“Next time, you’ll go first,” he promised. The corner of Cougar’s mouth twitched in a smirk. Running his hands up to Cougar’s hips, Jensen thumbed the crease of his thighs, skirting the dark thatch of curls. “I have plans for this.”

Cougar slanted him an expectant look from underneath a raised eyebrow.

“I want it inside me.”

Cougar’s head tipped forward again and he fixed Jensen with sharp eyes, all traces of lassitude gone.

“I want you inside me. I want you to slick me up and get me wet and I want you to fuck me. I want to feel all of you until all I can feel is you. Maybe you’ll have me on my back, just like this. Or maybe I’ll ride you instead. Pin you down, take my own pleasure.”

Cougar was rapidly losing his poise, his movements growing ever more unrestrained. Their eyes were still locked, mutually enthralled.

“You’re gonna come first, though. Gonna fill me up, make a mess of me, till I’m dripping with it. By then I’ll be begging for it, desperate for you to let me come. But fate isn’t the only cruel mistress. Since I didn’t come on your cock, you’ll let me have your fingers next. God, Cougs, those fingers, you have no idea…” Cougar’s graceful fingers, infinitely caring and capable, deadly efficient, might have starred not infrequently in Jensen’s more adult dreams. So maybe he was a little fixated, sue him.

“Tell me,” Cougar urged him hoarsely, rolling his hips into his fist.

“I’ll be ready for it, slick and needy. You gave it to me so good. You’ll give me two or three off the bat, no kid-gloves. Use them to take me apart, till I can’t take it anymore.”

Cougar pitched forward, catching himself with a hand splayed over Jensen’s chest.

“You’ll have me writhing on them, at your mercy. But you won’t touch me. I come on your fingers, or not at all.”

Jensen brought one hand up to lace it with Cougar’s, smearing streaks of his come between them.

“Take it or leave it,” he breathed. “Fingers…or not at all.”

Cougar’s hips bucked a few final times, then, with a stifled grunt, he came in long ropes, adding to the mess on Jensen’s torso. Head hanging low, Cougar remained balanced above Jensen for another moment before he listed forward and sort of collapsed onto Jensen, face buried in Jensen’s neck.

Jensen raised his hand (the one not covered in both of their come, Jesus) and cupped it around the nape of Cougar’s neck. Even rank as they truthfully by now were, he absolutely loved the feeling of Cougar’s warm weight pressing him into the mattress. Loved burying his nose in Cougar’s hair and feeling Cougar’s heart beat against his chest.

“Hey, Cougs.”

Cougar made an indistinct sound.

“I love you.”

Saying it still made his heart race unaccountably. Jensen hoped it would never stop.

His heart tripped over another beat when Cougar pressed a kiss into his neck. “Me too. You,” he replied.

“No, please, mock my pain,” Jensen sighed dramatically. He felt Cougar smile against his skin. “Also, we really should shower. We’re filthy.”

“Mm. You especially. Your mouth…”

“Oh, don’t sound so scandalized. This cannot come as a surprise to you.”

Cougar shrugged a languid shoulder. “You’re…shy, sometimes.”

“Fuck you,” Jensen retorted without heat.

“I thought we just did.”

“That was truly awful,” Jensen groaned. “No, really. I want it noted that I am officially disgusted.”

Cougar pinched his side. “Shh.”

“Ow! All right. What’s with the pinching, geez.” Jensen ran his fingers through Cougar’s hair for a content while. “I’m serious about that shower, though.”

He got another noncommittal noise from Cougar.

Truth be told, he wasn’t in a tremendous hurry to go anywhere. If they permanently stuck together, well, there were worse things.

Like somebody banging loudly on the door.

“I don’t care if you’re having wild monkey sex hanging from the chandelier,” Pooch’s voice proclaimed. “If you’ve eaten the chocolate chips I specifically bought for pancakes again, Jensen, I’m coming in there to whoop your ass!”

“Do you think he’ll believe we’re sleeping if we keep quiet?” Jensen whispered.

“Jensen! I know you can hear me.”

“How do you know I’m not busy giving my pal Cougar here a blowjob?” Jensen called back.

There was a short pause.

“All right, one? TMI, bro. Two, if that were the case then you couldn’t very well be talking shit, now, could you?”

Jensen had just opened his mouth to respond when Pooch continued. “You know what, don’t answer that. You might as well stay in there. You’re officially uninvited for breakfast!”

“Fine by me. I’ve got something much better to eat in here, anyway!”

There was no answer from beyond the door.

Jensen could feel Cougar shaking with silent laughter.

“You know, you could really be more supportive. I feel like that falls within your purview as my –” Jensen faltered. Lover? Paramour? _Boyfriend?_ He felt like they should talk about this. It was something people talked about, right?

Cougar patted his chest. “You will figure it out.”

Truthfully, Jensen didn’t know if he ever would. He also didn’t know if he really needed to. He knew one thing, and it felt like that might be enough: With Cougar by his side, he never would be cold again.


End file.
